Many world-wide corporations maintain multiple web sites, each associated with a different country. For example, the Hewlett-Packard Company has www.hp.com for the United States, www.hewlettpackard.de for Germany, etc. Also, a main site may have a page or group of pages for different countries, for example http://welcome.hp.com/country/it/ita/welcome.htm is the Hewlett-Packard home page for Italy. Each country site or page maintains their own core content, e.g. pre-sales information, product information, search information, location information, job opportunity information, etc. The core content is typically in the language associated with a particular country. Core content may include, for example, information on products sold in the country of the user. This information is typically presented in the language of the user. Other information, i.e. non-core information may not be provided in the language of the user. For example, technical support information may only be provided in the language of the country of the main site, e.g. English. Moreover, such information may not be located on the web site of the user, but rather located on the main site, e.g. the U.S. site. Thus, a user may find themselves shifted to the main site, which is presenting information in a different language. Note that once at the main site, all information would be delivered in the language of the country of the main site (e.g. English) whether or not such information could be presented in the language of the user.
For example, a German user that is logged on to www.hewlettpackard.de would be able to navigate through out the site and see information in the German language, e.g. HP products available in Germany. The user may desire to see certain information, e.g. support information, regarding a particular product, e.g. a color printer. The information may be located on the German site, in which case, the user would be presented the information in German. If not, then the user would be shifted to the main US site, www.HP.com, whereby the information would be presented to the user in English. If the user can read English, then there is no problem, however many German people cannot, and thus they would not be able to understand the information.
Another problem is that once in the US site, the German user would be navigating around the US site. The user could be viewing a range of products (and their prices) and services which may not be available to a German user. Thus, the German user would be receiving improper information. Once in the US site, the German user may select another product, for which German information is available. However, since the German user made the selection in the US site, the German user would only receive the US information version (in English) and not the German version. This happens because there is no way for the system to know that the user is German, and that German information is available. Thus, even though it is preferable that the German user receives the German information version, the user would receive the US version.
Another problem is that once the German user is in the US site, there is no convenient way for the user to return to the German site. In other words, if the user selects the home button, the user is transferred to the US home page, and not the German home page. The user may select the ‘back up’ button, which transfers the user to the previous page. However, after navigating on the US site, the user may have to select the button twenty or more times. This is a time consuming process, which wastes network resources.